If the Nintendo Switch 2 does arrive at some point in 2024, it will apparently have some staunch competition from Sony to contend with. Rumors about a PlayStation 5 Pro have been swirling for months, but in recent weeks, reliable sources have shared fresh information about the upgraded console. These leaks cover everything from a potential release window to specific details about the components that will power the PS5 Pro when it debuts next year.
This string of rumors kicked off in May 2023, when Tom Henderson reported on Insider Gaming that the PS5 Pro was in development with an expected release window of Q4 2024. Henderson returned with another report in July on Key to Gaming, claiming that the PS5 Pro is codenamed Trinity, has been in the works since 2022, and will launch in November 2024.
Around the same time, @Kepler_L2 on Twitter revealed that Viola was the codename for AMD’s PS5 Pro system-on-chip. Months later, shortly after the release of the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer, Kepler said that if GTA 6 runs at 30FPS on PS5, it will likely run at the same frame rate on PS5 Pro, as “the CPU upgrade on the Pro is rather small.”
Moving into December, the floodgates opened as Sony purportedly sent dev kits to developers so they could begin testing their games on the new hardware.
The most substantial PS5 Pro leak this month comes from ResetEra user RandomlyRandom67, who shared an avalanche of information regarding the console’s specifications:
- Viola is fabbed on TSMC N4P.
- GFX1115
- Viola’s CPU is maintaining the zen2 architecture found in the existing PS5 for compatibility, but the frequency will once again be dynamic with a peak of 4.4GHz. 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 8 MB of L3 shared (4 MB per CCX).
- Viola’s die is 30WGPs when fully enabled, but it will only have 28WGPs (56 CUs) enabled for the silicon in retail PS5 Pro units.
- Trinity is the culmination of three key technologies. Fast storage (hardware accelerated compression and decompression, already an existing key PS5 technology), accelerated ray tracing, and upscaling.
- Architecture is RDNA3, but it’s taking ray tracing improvements from RDNA4. BVH traversal will be handled by dedicated RT hardware rather than fully relying on the shaders. It will also include thread reordering to reduce data and execution divergence, something akin to Ada Lovelace SER and Intel Arc’s TSU.
- 3584 shaders, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs.
- 16GB of 18 gbps GDDR6. 256-bit memory bus with 576 GB/s memory bandwidth.
- The GPU frequency target is 2.0 GHz. This lands the dual-issue TFLOPs in the range of 28.67 TFLOPs peak (224 (TMUs) * 2 (operations, dual issue) * 2 (core clock)). 14.33 TFLOPs if we ignore the dual-issue factor.
- 50-60% rasterization uplift over Oberon and Oberon Plus, over twice the raw RT performance.
- XDNA2 NPU will be featured for the purpose of accelerating Sony’s bespoke temporal machine learning upscaling technique. This will be one of the core focuses of the PS5 Pro, like we saw with checkboard rendering for the PS4 Pro. Temporally stable upscaled 4K output at higher than 30 FPS is the goal.
- September 2024 reveal
We can’t confirm or deny any of that information, but this would be one of the most impressively detailed fabrications in recent years. Plus, more sources have since lightly corroborated the leak. Henderson noted on Twitter that Sony was expecting leaks due to dev kit distribution, while Jeff Grubb said on his podcast that the “PS5 Pro leak is almost certainly real.”
“The current specs are based on a range of possibilities because they have not actually fully dialed that in,” Grubb explained. “The system probably is coming out September 2024. The big feature that this system would support is Sony’s own proprietary DLSS-like solution, where they use their own machine learning to improve images so they can run things at a really high resolution and really high frame rate, and they would include their own hardware in the PS5 Pro to do this. That’s where the 2x hardware ray tracing acceleration comes into place.”
Barring a change in plans, it sounds like the PS5 Pro is full steam ahead for next fall. They are clearly targeting different segments of the market, but depending on how powerful the PS5 Pro ends up being, Nintendo may have a harder time selling the inevitably underpowered Switch 2. Either way, we should have plenty of shiny new video game hardware to spend our money on next holiday season if these rumors all come true.
